


Braiding Lessons

by shakespeareaddict



Series: No Living Man [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Beard Braiding, Dwarf Culture & Customs, F/M, Female Gimli, Pre-Relationship, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 09:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11803617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareaddict/pseuds/shakespeareaddict
Summary: While fixing her beard braids at Isengard, Gimli teaches Legolas a little of Dwarven culture and Legolas almost crosses a line.Warning for a somewhat suggestive description of beard touching and a complete disregard for movie-Gimli's actual beard style.





	Braiding Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to do a series of short, interconnected one-shots featuring gender-flipped LotR characters for a little while now, but this is the only one I've written so far. This may or may not be the only one that ends up published, though.  
> This takes place sometime after the fall of Isengard but before the whole Palantir debacle. Most of the dwarven names I've either taken from the translation of the Dvergatal ("Catalogue of Dwarves", part of the Norse epic Voluspa, from which Tolkien named most of his dwarves) linked to below, or made up based on canon names.  
> A few notes on the braids mentioned and other things can be found in the end notes.  
> https://www.jrrvf.com/glaemscrafu/english/dvergatal.html

“Do you need assistance, Master Dwarf?”

Gimli looked up from her comb and beard, eyeing Legolas, who had appeared near-silently at her side. The Elf was smiling, an expression so small that she would have missed it when they first began their journey, or even before Lothlorien and the hunt for their Hobbits; now she might be blinded but she could guess his expression from the tone of his voice alone. But she could not always divine the reason for it—if he teased or mocked her, or was simply in a strange Elfish mood that brought forth his joy. So her tone was light, ready to return any teasing, when she said, “That depends entirely on what assistance you intend to offer, Master Elf.”

Legolas laughed, light as chimes in a gentle breeze and pure as an untouched vein of silver. “You struggle with your grooming, my friend. I would help you braid your beard.”

Gimli's every muscle tensed, her hand stopping midway through a particularly stubborn knot. This—she had not thought of this. Her blood drummed in her ears, and the only thing that kept her from responding on instinct (not that she knew how her instincts would direct her) was the thought that Legolas knew not what he had offered. No Elf or Man could.

But Legolas knew her, and that small smile fell from his face before she could think of a reply, eyes narrowing. “Have I offended your Dwarvish pride? In Lothlorien I helped you braid your hair at your own request. Is this any different?”

She forced her hands to pull through the knot and put the comb down, her eyes never leaving his face. It had closed off as quickly as a sky clouding over in a summer storm, and all Gimli's new-found expertise in reading him could not help her now.

“Perhaps to Men, it is the same,” she said, each word as precisely placed as if she walked through the unstable and dead halls of Moria. “Not so for Dwarves. Dwarrows may help one another with their hair, out of friendship or necessity. Beards are far more personal. The last person to groom my beard was my mother, and that only because she knew I might not return to her.” Gimli had been reluctant to undo the hard work of Gloin even as she washed in Lothlorien. The thought of the Lady Galadriel seeing her disheveled had been the only thing that let her redo all her braids.

Legolas' face softened as quickly as it had closed off. “Oh! I did not think—you must forgive me, dear Gimli. Dwarven customs are strange and unknown to me still, and in my ignorance I have offended you. I will trouble you no more.”

“I have no doubt I have offended you as well, for I know as little of Elven ways as you know of mine,” Gimli said quickly, before Legolas could do more than turn away. If they took offense at every mistake they would not long be friends, and that thought was uncomfortable indeed. "Would you still hold me responsible for any slights I gave you?”

“Never!" cried Legolas. "Once, perhaps, yes, when we were strangers. But I know now that they are unintentional, for you could never desire to harm a friend! They are forgiven and forgotten at once, for the sake of our friendship, which I value far more than any grudge I might bear you.”

“Just as all slights you give me are forgiven, and forgotten, though it seems I take a moment more to do so than you. In this at least the stubbornness of Dwarves outlasts that of Elves,” Gimli teased. “Now come and sit! The business of grooming can grow tedious, and your company is always a welcome boon.”

Legolas stood for a moment of indecision, half leaning away as if he might at any moment take off to speak with the Ents or sigh sadly among the Men. Gimli took up her comb again and worked at her beard, and stifled any smiles or sighs of relief when he at last stepped closer and sat beside her upon the stone she had chosen for a seat.

For a time they were silent, Gimli enjoying the companionship as she tamed her beard and Legolas observing the birds about fallen Isengard with intent. When Gimli folded her comb and pulled out her small travel-box of ties and beads, however, she abruptly felt his sharp Elf eyes on her once more. They followed her fingers as she wove her kinship beads carefully into the first of her braids, and as she gathered a hank of hair for a snake tail. When she began hunting for its corresponding clasp, she at last addressed him

“Speak your mind, lad. I promise to smother my Dwarvish pride and feel no offense, no matter what you may say.”

He hesitated a moment more before answering. “You are terribly careful with your beard's grooming.”

“Aye.”

“When I braided your hair in Lothlorien, you had no concern for the style, though it was different from what you wore for the first part of our journey.”

“It was skillfully done, and fine enough for even my fair Lady to see,” Gimli admitted. The words came easily, as they should, being true. “I would feel no shame before my Maker himself with such craftsmanship in my hair. But something else is on your mind, and you talk around the point. I will feel no offense if you plow through.”

Cheeks pinking at her compliment, Legolas began, “Your beard,” then stopped. One of the Men of Rohan shouted to another for some ale; a raven landed a few feet away, grumbling about moving trees disturbing her usual nesting sites. Gimli affixed the proper clasp at the end of the snake tail and sat patiently, fingers beating out an unheard rhythm on her thigh.

At last Legolas found the words to continue. “You have worn it the same since we met in Rivendell; only the beads differed. Even now you repeat the style.”

“Your Elf eyes miss little.” Gimli sat for a moment more in thought. There was a sweet smell of growing things and good earth, like hazy memories of passing through the Shire in her youth in Thorin's Halls, floating from the new-sprung forest on a gentle breeze. There Gandalf stood, talking to an Ent, the other walking trees well-hidden among their stationary kin. The Men were engrossed in their celebrations and the Hobbits out of sight, doubtless getting themselves into further mischief. No one was near enough to hear either of them very well, if at all, and the afternoon sunlight was warm and peaceful.

Dwarves guarded their secrets closely, even jealously; but Legolas was her friend, and he did not press her to continue, though that Elfish curiosity no doubt burned to do so. And she had already broken a great number of taboos to even call him friend. One more, and such a harmless one, would bring no harm.

Decided, she turned on her seat to face him properly, drawing up one leg as she did so. He turned and mirrored her, eyes already bright on her face. “I wear the same style because it is not simply a style, but a declaration. A Dwarf's beard marks their lives for all to see; to wear it differently is unthinkable. Each braid and bead has a meaning that another Dwarf can read at a glance, and so know who they are and how to act about them.”

“And what might a Dwarf read in your beard?”

Legolas looked surprised at his own words, as if his mouth had run away without his mind's permission. Gimli had expected this, however, and did not give him time to apologize and withdraw the question. She touched first the kinship beads beneath her left cheek, a simple three-strand braid running through them. “First, that my parents have been blessed with five children, and I, the first-born, am heir to the chief of their positions and property. There is one bead for each of us; mine is the bright blue, and atop the others as first-born. Frar, Hanar, and Svior's beads follow, with Signy's last.”

“But they are all the same brown,” said Legolas, peering at the four beads of her younger siblings intently. “Are they truly any different, or do they just show that you have four siblings?”

“My travel set is mere symbolism.” Gimli withdrew from her box the five tungsten kinship beads she kept for special occasions and held them out for Legolas' inspection. The Elf tentatively picked up the sapphire-studded bead which symbolized Gimli herself. “These were forged for me by aunts and uncles for the birth of each of my siblings. The engravings I added myself as they grew.”

The nimble fingers of Legolas seemed intent on feeling each bead all about, quick eyes drinking in each groove and embellishment. “What do these markings mean? This is Khuzdul, yes?”

“They are runes and pictograms. The first letter of their name is in Cirth here, and a small picture to represent their chosen craft lies opposite. Hanar studies to be a healer, thus the herbs and staff you see on this one.”

“But this bead carries only a rune!” Legolas let Hanar's bead drop and picked up Signy's, scrutinizing each angle as if he expected some secret marking to appear in a flash of sunlight.

“Signy is too young to have chosen a craft yet, so I have engraved nothing,” Gimli replied, gathering the beads once more and depositing them back in their special compartment. Then she touched at the snake tail tucked behind her left ear and weaving into her beard. “Now, for this. The snake tail in my hair signifies I am a full-grown dwarrow-dam; it weaves into my beard and continues there to show I've reached my first mastery. I've a fancier clasp with all the proper symbols for a master mason, though it's impractical for the road."

"You are a master mason?" Legolas seemed most surprised. "I never guessed!"

"By trade, aye. It was not my first choice of craft, but it served me well in my youth. My master-work was the design and implementation of the Northward entrance to Erebor; Frar's work on the iron components earned my brother his journeymanship." Gimli shrugged, as if to say it was of no matter. "Even our best warriors and diplomats have a craft or two. We were made to take joy in creation as much as we were made to endure."

Legolas hummed in acknowledgment. “And the braid I have seen beneath your chin? It is particularly intricate.”

Gimli took one of his hands and gently dropped what was needed for her lineage braid into his palm. “Aye, it is. I prefer four strands in my lineage braid.” So saying, she ran her fingers through the section she would braid, separated enough for it, and began.

Legolas at first kept his eyes on the beads and clasps and ties she had handed him, observing each one intently as if they might reveal some long-held secret underneath his staring. It was not long before his eyes first caught on her fingers as she deftly tucked and twisted and wove. Gimli herself kept her own eyes on the horizon until she trusted it was long enough for the first bead, and asked for one.

She had to ask twice before he heard her, and then he took a moment to pick over the beads in his cupped palm. It reminded her of nothing so much as a pale magpie searching its little hoard for the choicest of baubles, and she had to stifle her laugh at the thought.

“It does not matter which?” he asked a second time, one finger resting lightly over a dark blue bead.

“I have already said it does not. I wear them in no particular order, Elf, and I wear them all, so there is no need for such fussing.”

His face twisted up, as if objecting to the characterization of himself as “fussing”, and he handed over the bead with such a desultory air Gimli let out a short chuckle.

“Ah, Grandmother Ai's bead!” Gimli said with some delight when she took a look at the one she held. “She was a masterful silversmith, from a distant branch of the line of Thekir. You see the engraving here, the forge and fist? It is the symbol of Thekir's line, and the color is to show she was a Firebeard.”

Legolas was swayed from his displeasure and back into curiosity as Gimli threaded the bead through a strand of her beard and continued braiding. He gave her Grandfather Dvior's Broadbeam-green bead without a word, listening in silence to her expound on the memories she had of him in the Blue Mountains. It was not until he gave her Grandmother Nali's Longbeard-blue bead, adorned with a rendition of her mining pick, that he spoke again.

“Each of your grandparents has a bead in this lineage beard, then.”

It was not truly a question, but Gimli answered as if it had been. His gaze on her was beginning to grow heavy, her throat drying quickly from more than just holding up the conversation. “They do. These days it is more common to use only two beads, for the parents, but I like this tradition better.” For a moment there was silence as she watched the braid continue to form under her fingers. She had fumbled once or twice since Legolas first fixed his eyes on her, and did not wish to do so again.

“My parents were born after the dragon came,” she said at length. “Granfather Groin was not best pleased with the match. Simli daughter of Nali, a common miner, wife of his darling Gloin, who was cousin to lords on one side and kings on the other? You would think for all his outrage they had never left Erebor, and were still living in splendor under the mountain. But my parents would have none but one another, and ignored him. His ire cooled, but never faded.”

“Then why honor him in your lineage braid?” Legolas handed over the blue bead for Groin without her having to ask. She imagined his brows were drawn down as he spoke. “Why not simply honor your parents, and the choice they made?”

“Because Nali and Dvior, though they might be a miner and a tinsmith, deserve no less honor than Ai and Groin, silversmith and king's adviser. And besides, I like the symbolism of a four-strand braid—the idea that the blood of all four of my grandparents runs through my veins, comingling until it is inseparable, a whole rather than four parts.”

“A poet's thoughts,” said Legolas, handing over the clasp and ties at her motion. “But I have oft noted how well you weave words, Gimli Silvertongue.”

Gimli snorted. “A fine appellation, Master Greenleaf, but I will stick to my name for now, at least until I have earned my second mastery."

They had been sitting close together for all the time Gimli groomed, though the distance had waxed and waned some as Legolas leaned forward to observe a particular motion she made or back to breathe again. But always his hands had rested on his legs, or hovered between them at the same point.

Yet as Gimli straightened her braids and beard, a quick, pale hand darted forward as if to touch her beneath her right cheek. “This unadorned section—”

Gimli startled backwards; Legolas froze and tensed. His hand floated an inch, maybe less, above the copper curls of her beard. She hardly dared to breathe.

The moment stretched and expanded between them, like a growing bubble of molten glass in the hands of an apprentice glassblower, threatening to shatter. Gimli felt blind and deaf to the world around them, to anything that wasn't her pulse pounding in her ears and Legolas' quickened breathing, anything other than the long fingers so close to touching her beard. And not just a kinship braid or a lineage braid, not the clasp which declared her mastery or even the hair between any of those, no. No, those calloused fingertips and well-trimmed nails were almost—almost—touching the spot where she would one day weave her marriage braids.

An old tradition, to be sure; her cousins had laughed when she first started leaving this space unadorned for her One's fingers. But not even her mother would dare so much as brush the hair beneath her right cheek, and now Legolas....

He would be gentle, came the thought, a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky, an avalanche on a slope that had moments before been steady, true stone. His hands had been so gentle when he braided her hair, wary of pulling or snagging too tight. He would be gentle with her beard, too, maybe even—Mahal forbid—reverent beneath the burning curiosity she had felt since he offered to help her with grooming. Gentle, and curious, and maybe-reverent, and when his fingers reached her skin, hidden beneath her curls, would he be so bold as to touch her there as well? To rub, and scratch, and stroke, and—

Gimli wrenched herself away from such thoughts with an effort worthy of song. Beards, like dark-names, were saved for family and for Ones, and for all the friendship she bore him Legolas could be neither. Such fantasies were inappropriate and immature.

Legolas drew his hand away at last, inch by inch. Gimli kept her eyes locked on them, and told herself she was not disappointed.

When his hands were folded once more over his boots, fingers interlaced tightly, Legolas spoke at last. “I have overstepped.” His voice was blank and even. Gimli dared not look at his face or beyond those hands, the dips and rises of his bones beneath the skin.

She had to clear her throat twice before she could speak. “Beards are—beards are not touched.” His knuckles whitened further, tension gathering in his arms and legs, before she forced herself to continue. “You did not know.”

“I still should not have—” Legolas cut himself off. His voice was still damnably level, giving no clue to his thoughts or expression. “You told me grooming them was different. I ought to have guessed—I should have asked—”

Gimli could hardly argue against that.

Legolas' voice seemed very small when he said, “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

The tone was enough for her to look up at last and take in his face. Misery was writ in every line and curve. His eyes were downcast, his shoulders hunched as if awaiting a blow. If he had been any other Elf, or she any other Dwarf, perhaps it would have come; should have come, for all that he was ignorant of the magnitude of what he had almost done.

But this was Legolas, who would not intentionally harm her for all the gold in Khazad-dum—for all the trees in Fangorn, perhaps, was a more appropriate saying when speaking of an Elf—and she would sooner shear her beard to the skin than let him suffer further. She settled one hand atop his own and squeezed lightly, mindful of her strength.

“You did not know,” she repeated, “and you did not touch. I would not break with you over this.”

“But—”

“It is forgiven,” she said firmly. “And in an hour's time it will be forgotten. Do not chastise yourself over a mistake, one I already forgave.”

So saying, she squeezed his hands again and turned to packing away her travel-box and stowing it safely in a pocket. “Come now, let's find what mischief our little Hobbits have gotten themselves into!” she continued, hoping in vain that the false cheer in her voice was not too noticeable. “For surely it is great indeed, if we have not heard from them for so long.”

Legolas was still grimmer than she'd seen him since they thought Merry and Pippin were lost forever. He hunched over himself, hair falling about his face to hide it from view. His usual paired braids had fallen apart at some point and half-unraveled.

Now there was a thought.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Gimli leapt atop the rock, standing just behind her friend, who did not move until she started to unpick all his braids the rest of the way. He straightened abruptly.

“Gimli, what—”

“You're looking shabby indeed, Legolas Greenleaf,” she teased, pulling hair together for a proper gathered fishtail. “What would your father say if he saw you like this?”

Legolas relaxed slowly under her hands. “Something scathing about Dwarven braiding abilities, no doubt.”

Gimli hardly kept back a laugh at that. “Then I should have to disprove him! I think a few reverse-gathered braids along your skull, leading to a be-ribboned seven-strand braid, would look very nice. Or perhaps a ladder, or a braided bun of some kind, would impress him more? What say you, Master Elf?”

Legolas did not reply. It took a moment for Gimli to identify the undignified sounds he made as laughter, but a particularly loud snort clued her in. It was far removed from his usual musical mirth, and unfamiliar, yet already as dear as his normal peals of laughter.

She tied off the braid and leapt to the ground in silence, but once more this was the comfortable silence they had shared before he asked her to explain her braids and beads, before she told him of beards. When they started back for the group of Men to look for their Hobbits they fell easily into step, as always. Legolas smiled at her, and Gimli smiled back, and all was right between them.

And if some small, over-eager part of her wished he had dared to lean forward and put his fingers to her beard—if she forgot all her initial offense but not the incident itself—well. That was no one's business but her own.

**Author's Note:**

> Three-strand braid: a basic three-strand braid, as you'd expect. I imagine the braid starts just below Gimli's bead and ends after her youngest sibling's bead, with the middle three evenly spaced up and down its length.  
> Snake tail: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a9/4a/9d/a94a9df407c46d3bc4c2d75c56738391--hairstyles-videos-cute-girls-hairstyles.jpg  
> Four-strand lineage braid: I'm thinking something like this https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/14/6d/c0/146dc0d6826df9449cd08c563d5f40fd---braids-four-strand-braids.jpg, but with evenly-spaced beads on the center strand.  
> Gathered fishtail: AKA a French fishtail, like this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/83/f9/19/83f919b78b57e42b16e0ad31b1e43e4a--french-fishtail-braids-fishtail-braid-how-too.jpg. It doesn't make sense for there to be "French" and "Dutch" braids in Middle-Earth, so I call them "gathered" and "reverse-gathered" for the sake of description.  
> For what it's worth, I like to believe that at this point on the journey most people are (still) under the impression Gimli is actually male, and she just rolls with it. Dwarven gender rolls are weird.


End file.
